Real Weddings, Advice, & Inspiration

Catalyst Wedding Company highlights weddings by and for game-changers. We seek to amplify and empower voices and viewpoints that are usually missing from the Wedding Industrial Complex. We're a community of badass wedding professionals who love all things funky, fresh, diverse, unique, and personality-driven; we convene twice yearly for (un)convention, a collaborative workshop, styled shoot, and dinner party. We're also the publishers of Catalyst Wedding Mag, a resource for couples looking for inspiration and affirmation that doing things differently in wedding-world is not only ok, it's wonderful!

Ed and Vanessa are a queer couple that are activists for social justice in the Richmond area. Their wedding was DIY and cost less than $500 including Vanessa's traditional West African wedding dress, jewelry, and headpiece. The food was catered by potluck through friends. Vanessa made the gluten-free red velvet wedding cake with cream cheese buttercream frosting with a friend's help with the frosting and decorating with the flowers! A true celebration of love and community!

Images courtesy of photographer Tu Nguyen

TU NGUYEN

Tu Nguyen is a self-taught photographer from Long Beach, California. His job is providing care for the community as a medical resident at MCV but he makes plenty of time to help out friends and organizations by providing photography for their events. He also enjoys making short films with friends and was awarded Best Director, Producer, and Cinematographer by his medical school class; he is also the recipient of the Joseph Collins Scholarship for his deep passion in arts and cultural pursuits outside the field of medicine.